A/N: So, how I spawned this odd thing… I can think of so many awkward situations the Drop Gauge could cause. XD Plus I wondered what happens to Sora when the player is controlling Riku, or vice versa. And then there was some inspiration from some of Raberba girl's stories where the characters have off-screen lives. This is definitely a crackfic. :P

Suddenly, right in the middle of a very important cutscene, Sora was smacked in the face by a wave of dizziness. The buildings of Traverse Town contorted like he was looking at them in a funhouse mirror, and Neku and the black-coat-guy blurred out of sight.

"What? Why am I so… sleepy?" He clutched his head, trying hard to cling to consciousness, but he would've had better luck fighting knockout gas. He passed out on the hard ground.

Riku was going to tease him forever if he found him like this. What kind of Keyblade Master fell asleep at the very beginning of the test?

"Huh?" Neku paused in his fight with the black-coat guy to look behind him. Sora had seemingly dropped out of existence.

Oh well, back to fighting.

XXX

"Nrgh… Where am I?" Sora blinked, feeling completely refreshed aside from a very annoying headache, which seemed to be fading quickly. Probably from hitting his head on the ground in Traverse Town… wait, why wasn't he in Traverse Town? He was sprawled on plush carpet that smelled like it had been vacuumed recently. He could hear the sound of a vacuum, too.

"Oh, hey, Sora." The vacuum turned off. "Wasn't expecting the whole 'Drop' thing to just spit you on the floor. You're okay, right? If you're dizzy try not to throw up on the carpet, I just cleaned it."

"Roxas?" Sora asked, recognizing the voice and standing unsteadily. The voice laughed.

"Ven, remember? I've been here since two games ago. Well, three now." Oh, Ven. That made sense. Sora had thought his voice sounded too hyper to be Roxas.

"Hi, Ven!" Sora replied cheerily, shaking off the last traces of his headache. "Sorry, I'm still a little out of it. Where am I?"

Ven grinned and gestured grandly to the hotel lobby-looking room. "Nomura thought we deserved a new place to stay, with the new game and all. Don't worry, we moved your stuff already. You get the biggest room, lucky." He didn't sound too jealous, though. "But you can see that later. Aqua probably wants to explain some stuff to you."

Sora was pretty confused by the info-dump. When did they move, exactly? Probably as soon as he left for the Mark of Mastery Exam. Why wasn't he told about it, though? And what did Aqua need to explain?

"Okay." Sora followed Ven into an elevator, where some waiting music that sounded like "Lazy Afternoons" played in the background. "Cool, the last place only had stairs!" Not that stairs were that much of a pain, but Sora was fascinated by elevators.

Ven grinned. "Just wait 'til you see the swimming pool. It's no ocean, but there's a huge water slide. Demyx's been playing there all day."

"Awesome!"

They stopped at floor fourteen, and Ven led the way down a hall to a spacious room at the end. Sora gasped at the numerous huge screens lining the walls.

"Riku!" He ran to the biggest screen, almost tripping over an out-of-place beanbag and the person sitting in it. Sora said a quick apology without looking to see who it was. He was more interested in what was on the screen: Riku talking to a boy who introduced himself as Joshua.

"Idiot, I'm trying to watch here!" Vanitas got up and shoved Sora aside before plopping back down on his beanbag.

"Sorry, Vani." Sora grinned. Vanitas growled.

"I told you never to call me that."

"Lay off him, Vanitas," Terra said from the beanbag next to him.

"Why should I? He's an idiot."

Sora shrugged, ignoring Vanitas's usual insults, and went back to watching Riku. He and Ventus had to stay standing up because the two other boys were using the only bean bags. It was strange to see a cast of characters like that simply watching TV, but there was a constant truce on this side of the Fourth Wall that kept Vanitas from attacking them, or vice versa.

"Hello, Sora," Aqua greeted, walking up from behind him. She turned to face Ven, who had been prodding the spikes of Vanitas's hair while the others were watching Riku. "Ven, are you finished with your chores?" Sora wondered when Aqua had started assigning chores – if he remembered correctly, that had been Saïx's job since Kingdom Hearts II. Maybe it was because Saïx – or Isa, he wasn't sure if he had changed his name back or not – was needed somewhere Dream Drop Distance? Sora didn't know. Namura wasn't going to give them all the spoilers, even though their memories from this realm didn't carry over inside the Fourth Wall.

Ven hid his hands behind his back and summoned his most innocent look. "Everything looks clean to me."

Aqua put her hands on her hips. "I told you, we can't treat this castle like we did the last one. Remember the melted ice cream drops all over the carpet?"

"But we just moved here!" Ven protested. "There aren't any ice cream drops to clean up!"

"Ven," Aqua said in her motherly "I'm-warning-you-young-man" tone, and Ven sighed.

"Fine, I'll finish vacuuming." He trudged off after flicking Vanitas's hair one last time, provoking a stream of threats from the black-haired boy. Aqua rolled her eyes but stifled a laugh.

"Nomura decided that with a change of castle, there should also be a change of duties. I organize the chores and other assignments around here now," she explained, "so I'm trying to get everyone in the habit of keeping this place clean. Not that most of them listen…" Aqua gave Terra a light punch on the shoulder, and Sora laughed.

"Hey, this is way more important." Terra didn't take his eyes off the screen. "Riku's technically my protégé. I need to follow his progress."

Vanitas snorted. "Yeah, right. You're just too lazy to clean the toilets."

"It'll get done; I always took care of my chores in the Land of Departure. Besides, I don't see you washing any windows." Terra glared at Vanitas, who smirked.

"My Unversed did that hours ago. I'm a bad guy, and I actually help out around here." It was rather ironic, since Vanitas had always weaseled his way out of chores when Saïx was in charge. Sora wondered if his change had anything to do with Aqua.

"Only because you don't have to do any work yourself. You just have your minions do it."

Vanitas growled and shoved Terra, apparently tired of the verbal battle. They began arguing and wrestling with each other until Aqua ordered them – in her "mother-demanding-respect" tone – to settle down. Vanitas smirked, apparently having come out with the upper hand, while Terra crossed his arms.

"I apologize, Sora." She sighed. "Riku will have to Drop soon. Follow me; I'll explain as much as I can about the new schedule."

Sora kind of wanted to keep watching Riku, but he nodded. "Right."

Aqua took him to a different part of the large screen-covered room, where they couldn't hear Terra cheering on Riku and Vanitas snarking about how much cooler his Unversed were than the Dream Eaters.

"So what's up with all this 'dropping' stuff?" Sora asked. Aqua pointed to a screen – much smaller than the one Riku was currently on – that showed Sora's sleeping form next to a filling-up gauge. "Huh? That's not me! I'm awake!"

Aqua shook her head, stifling a laugh. "When you Dropped, you fell asleep in the Sleeping World and woke up here, where you will stay until Riku Drops." Sora wasn't sure if that meant he was asleep now or not; the whole "Realm of Sleep" and "Sleeping Keyholes" and everything else about dreaming and sleeping was too confusing. "Did Nomura not brief you on this?"

"Oh!" Sora smacked himself on the forehead, wincing when it brought back his earlier headache. "Riku said something about a meeting last week…" He rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "But I overslept."

Aqua sighed, muttering something that sounded like "Just as bad as Ven…" Sora smiled in apology.

"Well, I'll have to explain that instead of what's going on around here, then," Aqua said. "When you wake up in the Sleeping World, you'll see a gauge beside your HP bar. This is called the Drop Gauge, and when it runs out, you'll appear back here, regardless of what you were doing at the time."

"Wait, you mean I'm going to just pass out? Again?" Sora gaped. "What if I'm talking to someone? Or in a boss battle?"

Aqua shrugged. "It won't matter. Nomura decided this was the best way to tie your story and Riku's together, since Terra, Ven, and my stories felt separated in Birth by Sleep."

"Riku?" Sora instantly perked up, ignoring the latter part of her sentence. "You mean he has to do this too?" That's right, she'd said something about Riku Dropping earlier, but he hadn't exactly understood then.

"Yes, you'll return to your adventure when he Drops here."

Sora punched the air happily. "Yes! He can't tease me about sleeping during the test!"

Aqua laughed. "No, I suppose not." She took a glance at the screen, where Sora's gauge was pixels away from being full. "He'll Drop soon. You should sit; I wouldn't want you to hit your head when you fall unconscious."

"Oh. Thanks, Aqua," Sora said when she pulled a chair (where had that come from? The only furniture he'd seen earlier was the two beanbags) over for him. "Hey, is Kairi around here anywhere?"

Aqua shook her head. "Well, she is here, but I don't know where. I'm afraid you'll Drop back before you can find her."

"Yeah…" Sora sighed. They'd said their goodbyes before he went to take the Mark of Mastery Exam, but he missed her already. Someday he hoped he could go on an adventure with her and Riku, but he didn't want to put her in harm's way. At least he knew that she wielded a keyblade now… Maybe they would get to go together someday. He knew she was as tired of being left behind as he was of leaving her behind.

He was so caught up in thoughts of Kairi that he made a startled sound when an alarm started blaring, jumping up and summoning his keyblade. "What's that? Heartless? Nobodies? Dream Eaters?" He forgot for the moment that this place – if it was anything like the last castle – was protected from monsters of all kinds.

Aqua smiled. "That sound means Riku's in Bonus Time."

"Oh. I knew that." Sora sat down, not having a clue what Bonus Time even was, and Aqua laughed.

"You said Riku attended that meeting, right?"

"Yeah…"

"Good, I won't have to brief him too." Aqua ruffled Sora's hair. He was used to it; she often treated him just like Ven. "Good luck out there."

Sora nodded. "Thanks," he replied over the sound of the alarm. It was too bad he would forget this when he went back to the Sleeping World, but at least he wouldn't be utterly confused when he returned to this world again. "Tell Riku hi for me, okay? And Kairi, if you see her."

"I will." Aqua smiled.

And Sora dropped.

A/N: I didn't get a chance to explain this very well, but the in-game world is what the characters consider the real world. The castle (which resembles a hotel) is for all the characters who are supposed to be dead or aren't in the game at the moment. So, for example, Kairi's in the castle because she doesn't do anything in 3D, but Axel-I-mean-Lea, even though he's not on-screen most of the time, is still in the in-game world looking for Isa. Hopefully that makes sense. I guess it's not too terribly important.

Anyway, all the drabbles after this are just going to be awkward moments caused by the Drop Gauge. They'll probably be from Sora's POV, but I might throw in some Riku ones if I feel like it or get ideas. The main reason for this chapter was to set up the later ones. I'm just going to update sporadically until I get bored or run out of ideas, at which point I'll slap a "complete" label on it.